Fantasy
by wisperinglilies
Summary: In the recent months I've been attempting to break myself of this deluded fantasy, but it doesn't seem to be working. There's just something about her auburn hair. I see it everywhere. Draco Malfoy is having fantasies about a certain redhead, Ginny is trapped in a loveless marriage. T for safety.
1. Chapter 1

A/N - This is my first fanfiction in a while, so I hope it doesn't suck! I just got this idea in my head while sitting in Sociology class and I thought it sounded pretty good. Please read/review! I plan to make it a full length story, but I'm in college so I can't make any guarantees about how long it will take me to post. Also, I don't own the characters.

I think that I'm losing my mind. I've begun imagining things that can't really happen. I've begun losing control of my thought processes and in public no less! It all started last month at the ministry ball. I was there alone, the proper thing for one who is 'mourning' the loss of his wife to do. (The fact that my bed was never empty was something to be kept to myself, especially in public.) [I'm pretty sure that everyone knew the truth about my private life anyway, but as my mother always says, 'Appearance is everything.'] I seem to be getting more and more off topic, once again.

I was having a horrible time keeping up appearances, despite the many women trying to earn their place in-between my sheets when _they_ walked in, the blessed prick Potter and his wife. I felt my usual sneer fall into place (something I had learned quite well to do from my dear uncle Snape), but then my eyes fell on Mrs. Potter. I don't know how it happened, but when I saw her that night she quite literally took my breath away.

I know that this all sounds so cheesy for a Malfoy to be saying; even I didn't know that it was possible for one of my social elevation to think such things. In that moment, however, I couldn't look away. Her midnight blue dress embraced the curves she had earned through the years in the most flattering way. It was as if the dress were thought into existence by the most profound artist, dreamed up on a canvas just for this perfect angel to wear. Her hair hung loose and wild, the soft waves falling down to the middle of her back. She wore no makeup or jewelry other than her wedding band. She was a rare beauty, one even greater than that of my recently deceased wife.

Throughout the night I continued to mingle, pretending to care about the pretentious anecdotes the women around me were sharing. I did what would have to be some of my best acting that night, going from circle to circle, providing meaningful interjections into conversation here and there while observing the angelic beauty from afar. She followed that husband of hers around like a brainless tart, but I had a feeling that it was just an act. A woman who could look that astonishingly beautiful has to have a brain. Her beauty was an accomplished beauty that came with experience and careful thought. I had always harbored a certain sense of disdain for Potter, but seeing the way he treated this beauty, like she didn't even exist, let's just say that my feelings for Potter flourished that night.

I took a deliciously unintelligent twit with dark red hair home with me that night, not the redhead that I truly desired, but I couldn't do anything about that just yet. Despite my less than sparkling reputation, I was not one to ruin a marriage. I would not actively pursue the married beauty of my dreams, but I could take as many unmarried redheads home with me as I dared and actively attempt to act out my lustful desires upon them.

That's what I did too. I bedded so many redheads in the next few months that the society pages of the Daily Prophet (which were really just a glorified version of a Muggle tabloid) started to speculate on whether I had developed a fetish for red hair. There were even a couple of articles hypothesizing that I had some sort of secret flame for the youngest Weasley. Little did they know how close to the truth they really were.

In the recent months I've been attempting to break myself of this deluded fantasy, but it doesn't seem to be working. There's just something about her auburn hair. I see it everywhere. I see it reflected in the deep mahogany hues of my wine every time I have a glass of sherry. The hair that I used to despise has become the focus of my deepest desires.

When I lay in bed at night it's sometimes all that I can think about. I long to run my fingers through her long, silky locks. Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly hopeless I think about what it would feel like to run my fingertips across her skin. I wonder if her milky white skin is as soft as it appears. If I were to rake the pads of my fingers down her side, would the skin there really feel like the soft down of a baby bird, the kind of smoothness that fosters a desire to rest my hand there for all of eternity?

At times my mind gets carried away and imagines the gentle ringing of her laughter as my hands grasp her around the ribs, fingers burrowing tenderly into her side. The sweet smell of the wine on her breath from dinner is intoxicating. She is beautifully exposed, laid out before me on my bed. The contrast of her hair against my dark, silky sheets would be a sight to behold.

It is at that moment, the moment when I start to see her silky locks and milky skin splayed out on the bed before me, that I come back to reality. The fallacy of my daydream is too outlandish for my conscious self to accept. Despite my greatest desires I realize that this dream, this delusion could never really happen. She is Potter's wife, and I can't change that.

But oh how I want to.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N - I know it has been ages, please don't hate me too badly! I just wanted to drop in a little note to say thank you to anyone who is still willing to read this after such a long waiting period! I really appreciate it. Also, a note about the setting of the story. I've sort of developed my own ideas about what happened in the Harry Potter world based on a combination of the books, the movies, and years and years of fanfictions, so this story is most likely AU for anyone not sharing the same brain as me. The characters may seem strange, but they're (obviously) based on my perceptions of the characters. It's set post-war, Ginny and Harry have been married for somewhere around five or so years, and Draco's wife (Astoria Greengrass in my head, although I'm not sure who he really married), recently passed away. That should do it. I hope you enjoy!

There was a time when he wouldn't sleep. The first two or three years after the war he would come home and join me in bed. I remember the way that he used to pull me into his arms and whisper into my ear, his warm breath carrying reassurance of his love. He would hold me like that, not saying anything else until I fell asleep. After I was sound asleep, he would pull his arms away from me and curl into himself on the other side of the bed, trying with all of his might to will away the nightmares, but it never worked. At first I tried to help, tried to return the favor by wrapping my arms around him when he woke me up screaming and anchor him to the world of the living, but it didn't work. Every night like clockwork the nightmares would come, the war demons would terrorize his dreams, twisting his reality into something new and terrifying.

He won't talk about it, won't acknowledge that it even happened. For him, there was no war, no time of sadness. He refuses to acknowledge the lives lost, to face the reality of what happened. He started willingly going to sleep, but something's different about it. He wakes up exhausted, like he never really slept. All he does is sleep and work, hardly pausing to eat. I don't think that he realizes that I notice, but I do. The way that he distances himself when I come near him, the way that he laughs if I try to bring it up, I notice everything. He is changing before my very eyes, and I don't know what to do about it.

There was a time when he loved me so much that his main goal in life was to keep me safe. He did everything that he could to keep me out of harms way. Now he doesn't even acknowledge my existence. We go to parties and ministry galas, and all that I have become to him is a dead weight on his arm. I can feel his anxiety clawing at the surface every time that I meet his eyes. All that he wants is to be free of me and everything that I mean. In his eyes I am no longer his wife, but a burdensom weight. He is the bird, and I have become the cage, allowing him to see what he wants but holding him back from getting it.

I decided that night would be different. When I went shopping for my dress for the yearly Heroes Day celebration at the ministry, I chose carefully what I would wear. My dress was tailored to fit my body, the color chosen specifically for him. It was the same navy blue color that I wore on our first date and the first time that he saw me in it his mouth dropped open. He pulled me to him and gave me a kiss so heated that my head spun and whispered in my ear, "it's as if that color was made for you." It sounds silly now, but that was the most amazing thing that anyone had ever said to me, and it was the truth. I knew that I would look amazing, I had to look amazing, because in my mind, it was my last chance. If I didn't win him back then there would be no future for us, and I desperately wanted there to be.

I shouldn't have bothered. I should have realized from the start that it was all going to end in disaster and just stayed home, but of course I didn't. Like an idiot I went along, hoping that something would be different this time because I had put so much work into my appearance, but nothing changed. I had made myself beautiful for him and he didn't even see it. When he came to pick me up he didn't even say anything, just tucked my arms into his and apparated to the ministry entrance. I spent the night following him around like a little lost puppy dog, my arm glued to his side the way that it was meant to be, when all I really wanted to do was walk away. He paid no attention to me really, just drug me around from person to person. I was his prize to be shown off, the cold silver ring on my left hand gluing me to his side. We were both trapped, he by his nightmares, and me by my desire to please him despite his lack of interest. I was and always would be his wife, and there was nothing that I could do to change that.

No matter how much I wanted to.


End file.
